Chapter 2The Broker's Last Secret

The cantina sat beneath Veridia's transit arteries, where condensation from coolant pipes wept down the walls and turned the air bitter. Darian wiped his palm on his thigh for the third time, watching the door.

Sera sat across from him, a half-empty glass of something green between her fingers. She hadn't touched it. Her eyes tracked every patron who entered—a habit born from years of looking over her shoulder.

“He's late,” she said.

“Brokers are always late. Makes them feel important.”

She didn't smile. “You trust your source?”

“Trust is a word for people who can afford insurance.” Darian shifted his weight, testing the ache in his shoulder where the graze wound pulled at every movement. The bandage beneath his jacket was fresh, but the wound kept seeping. “I paid for a name. The name led here. That's all I know.”

The door opened. A thin man in a patched coat entered, scanning the room with the quick, nervous dart of someone who'd survived too long in the trade. His left eye twitched beneath a small implant—a medical regulator, old model, the kind that couldn't afford proper calibration.

Sera set down her glass. The sound was quiet, but the broker's head snapped toward them.

He approached slowly, pulling out a chair without being invited. Up close, the implant looked worse—the skin around it was raw, and a faint whine escaped the casing every few seconds, like a dying insect.

“You're the ones asking about the Lomar package,” he said. Not a question.

Sera slid a cred chip across the table. The broker's eyes tracked it, but he didn't reach.

“I heard about the ceremony,” he said, looking at Darian. “Heard someone took a shot at your friend here. Crowded place like that, with Peacekeeper security? That's not a random act. That's a message.”

“We're not here for commentary,” Darian said.

“You're here for the chip. I know.” The broker leaned back, the chair groaning. “But I also know who's looking for it now. Your people put a bounty on the data broker circuit. Anyone who touched that file is worth a lot of dead.”

Sera's voice went flat. “Then why are you still alive?”

The broker's implant whined louder. “Because I'm good at hiding. And because I haven't decided what to do with the chip yet.”

“You'll decide now.” Sera reached into her jacket, and the broker tensed—but she only produced a second cred chip, larger than the first. “Double the original price. Half now, half when we have the file.”

The broker stared at the chips. His fingers twitched on the tabletop, a nervous drumming that matched the rhythm of his misaligned implant.

“There's a problem,” he said finally. “The chip isn't clean. I cracked the outer encryption, and there's a name inside. A journalist named Jax Tolliver. You know what that means?”

Darian's chest tightened. Tolliver. The name from the dead data broker's logs.

“It means the file is hot,” the broker continued. “Whoever killed the last broker is going to come for this one too. And I don't intend to be next.”

“Then take the money and disappear,” Darian said. “You've got enough there to buy a new face and a ticket off this planet.”

The broker's implant let out a sharp buzz, then fell silent. He reached for the chips.

“Fine. The hideout is three blocks east, above the old incinerator. I'll meet you there in an hour. Alone.” He stood, pocketing the cred chips without looking at them. “If you bring anyone else, I burn the file and you never see me again.”

He disappeared through the back door, leaving the green drink untouched.

---

The incinerator's upper floors had been abandoned for years. The elevator didn't work, so Darian and Sera climbed seven flights of stairs, their footsteps echoing against rusted metal. The air smelled of ash and old chemicals.

“You trust him?” Sera asked, her voice low.

“He took the money. That's enough for now.”

“That's not trust. That's desperation.”

Darian didn't argue. She was right.

The broker's door was ajar when they reached it.

Darian stopped, his hand going to the sidearm beneath his jacket. Sera moved past him, her own weapon drawn, her footfalls silent on the grimy floor.

She pushed the door open with her boot.

The broker lay on his back in the center of the room, his throat cut cleanly, his eyes still open. The implant in his eye socket had gone dark, finally silent.

And a figure stood over him, turning at the sound of the door.

The assassin from the ceremony.

She wore a different coat now, civilian clothes, but Darian recognized the way she held herself—the economy of motion, the predatory stillness. Her hand came up, and the prototype pistol barked twice.

Darian dove sideways, rolling behind a collapsed table as the shots punched through the wall behind him. Sera returned fire, her shots forcing the assassin to retreat behind a metal cabinet.

“The chip!” Sera shouted. “Find it!”

Darian scanned the room. The broker had been searching for something when he died—a floor panel near the desk was pried open, the edges splintered. Darian crawled toward it, keeping low as the assassin's shots chewed through the furniture around him.

His fingers found the gap in the floor. Something metallic was wedged inside.

He pulled it free. A data chip, its edges stained with dried blood.

“Got it!”

The assassin pivoted, firing directly at him. Darian rolled, the shot grazing his shoulder—the same shoulder, same arm, the wound reopening. He gasped, but kept the chip clenched in his fist.

Sera put three shots into the cabinet, forcing the assassin to duck. “Move!”

They ran.

Behind them, the assassin's radio crackled—a voice, clipped and urgent. “Shots reported. Peacekeeper patrol inbound, ETA two minutes.”

Darian and Sera hit the stairwell at a sprint, their footsteps hammering down the metal steps as sirens began to wail outside.

---

The speeder was stolen. Darian didn't ask where Sera had gotten the keys.

They raced through the lower levels, weaving between transit tubes and cargo haulers, putting distance between themselves and the flashing lights that converged on the incinerator. Sera drove with the same precision she'd shown in combat, her eyes never leaving the narrow corridors ahead.

Darian pressed the chip into his datapad, his fingers trembling from adrenaline and blood loss. The encryption was heavy—military-grade, layered with countermeasures that would have fried a civilian reader.

But Darian still had his old Peacekeeper access codes. The ones Rourke hadn't revoked yet, probably because he assumed Darian was too broken to use them.

The decryption ran. Progress bars crawled across the screen.

“How long?” Sera asked.

“Ninety seconds.”

“We don't have ninety seconds.”

A Peacekeeper cruiser dropped into the lane behind them, its lights flashing. Sera wrenched the speeder into a maintenance tunnel, the walls scraping against the vehicle's sides, sparks showering past the windows.

The decryption completed.

A fragment of audio played. A voice, distorted but urgent.

*“—confirmed. The Concord initiated the Anzon Conflict. Repeat: the Concord started the war. My source is inside the Admiralty. I have proof. If you're hearing this, I'm already dead. Find Jax Tolliver. He has the full—”*

The transmission cut off, the rest of the file corrupted beyond recovery.

But beneath it, a separate file remained intact. A message, text only, with coordinates attached.

*“The Concord started the war. My brother was killed for knowing. I'm next. Find me at the Drift's edge. —Jax”*

Sera glanced at the screen, her face unreadable.

Darian stared at the name. Tolliver. The journalist who'd been sending the transmissions. The one who'd been running since before the war ended.

“He's alive,” Darian said. “He's been alive this whole time.”

The Peacekeeper cruiser's siren grew louder behind them.

Sera pushed the speeder faster, angling toward the spaceport. “Then we'd better get to him before they do.”

The chip felt heavy in Darian's palm, its rusted edges biting into his skin like the teeth of an old wound.

He'd found the truth.

Now he had to survive it.